Against the Current, No. 206, May/June 2020
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A Crisis of Vast Unknowns
— The Editors -
Virus Is Color Blind, Not Humans
— Malik Miah -
UC Graduate Student Workers Wildcat Strike
— Shannon Ikebe -
Two-Tier Response to COVID-19
— Ivan Drury -
Producing Knowledge for Justice
— Rabab Abdulhadi -
On the Delhi Pogrom
— Radical Socialist, India -
Class Struggle and the Pandemic
— Kunal Chattopadhyay -
Introduction to William Z. Foster and the TUEL
— The ATC Editors -
TUEL and the Rank-and-File Strategy
— Avery Wear -
A New Economy Envisioned?
— Dianne Feeley - Reviews
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A Bitter Class Grudge War
— Rosemary Feurer -
The GI Bill, Then and Now
— Steve Early -
Vagabonds of the Cold War
— John Woodford -
A Problematic Diagnosis
— Michael Tee -
Hidden Deaths in a Long War
— Barry Sheppard -
Hugo Blanco's Revolutionary Life
— Joanne Rappaport -
Karl Marx in His Times
— Michael Principe -
Karl Marx in His Times
— Michael Principe - In Memoriam
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Gene Francis Warren Jr., 1941-2019
— Ron Warren -
Socialism as a Craft
— Mike Davis
The ATC Editors
WE PRESENT HERE a retrospective on an important initiative in U.S. labor and radical history, the Trade Union Educational League of the 1920s organized and led by William Z. Foster.
In a previous issue of Against the Current November-December 2019, #203), author Avery Wear presented a detailed account of Foster’s earlier “syndicalist” period of the 1910s, pioneering the hard campaign for inclusive industrial and non-racial trade unionism which would ultimately bear fruit in the mass upsurge of the 1930s. We recommend that article for background.
William Z. Foster’s subsequent career as a leader of the Stalinized U.S. Communist Party, with its many factional intrigues and changes in line, belongs to a different discussion. What’s important here is the lessons of the long struggle for militant, democratic unionism committed to social justice and working-class self-organization, and its relevance to a rank-and-file strategy for rebuilding today’s weakened and beleaguered labor movement.
May-June 2020, ATC 206